Dear UW-Stout Chancellor Charles Sorensen:

Due to recent events transpiring on your campus, it has become evident that a strong and decisive memo is necessary to address a serious situation affecting the lives, safety, health and well-being of the Stout students and community — namely, the incompetent, and at times dangerous steps you have proposed to curtail alcohol abuse.

In the eloquent and not at all reactionary or patronizing memo you sent out March 30, you outlined four solutions designed to help curb what you refereed to as “an excessive abuse of alcohol” on the Stout campus. By allotting more classes on Fridays, ramping up discipline for those caught on the wrong side of alcohol laws, cracking down on house parties through keg registration and outlawing drink specials at bars, you believe the dangerous culture that has taken the lives of six students in the past two years can be brought down to more palatable levels.

Which forces me to ask, how many Old Fashioneds did you consume when this was written? And they better have been made with brandy.

Let’s start with the banning of drink specials. By making drinks more expensive, you assume students will consume less, as binge drinking at a bar will simply be too expensive. And of course, you are correct. Binge drinking at a bar would be cut down.

But any student who has cracked open an economics textbook once in his or her life will also tell you that despite your price controls, the demand for binge drinking remains the same. Now students unwilling to pay $3.50 for a Miller Lite will merely find a substitute for their drinking needs — house parties.

I think we can all agree, chancellor, that driving students away from bars into unsupervised houses will not help solve any problem. Alcohol comes much cheaper at a house party — why pay $4 for a rail mixer when an entire handle of Fleischmann’s for $15 will do just fine — and security is available in the local pub for both fighting and over-intoxication. Plus, as I am sure you remember, three of your students died in 2008 from carbon monoxide poisoning in a house fire. All three were well above the definition of being legally drunk.

So in your overzealous attempt to solve what is really a statewide problem, you may have overlooked something. Banning drinking specials will actually make drinking more dangerous for students.

Then there is keg registration. Again, I think I can follow your logic. By knowing exactly where every keg in the city is going, large house parties will be easier to shut down.

Unfortunately, that obnoxious economics lesson applies once again. If kegs become too much of a hassle, students will merely switch to buying large quantities of hard alcohol. Some may even turn to Everclear (grain alcohol) to concoct some extremely potent Wop. So in your attempt to prevent alcohol abuse, you have really just incentivized switching from beer to alcohol. No sarcastic remark can explain how ironic this really is.

Next on the list of your moral sanctions is ratcheting up discipline for those charged with underage drinking, selling alcohol to minors and getting caught with a fake ID to name a few. While this clearly falls within your realm of power — something that can be questioned when it comes to telling small business owners how much they are allowed to charge for a drink — the motivation for this decree is a little peculiar.

If the campus truly does have a drinking problem, is increasing punishments –specifically suspension and expulsion for repeat offenders — really the “moral and ethical obligation” you speak of? Or if you truly care about helping students who rely on abusive alcohol habits, wouldn’t increased counseling and rehabilitation programs be more appropriate? If your students are already on their way to typical Wisconsin alcohol abuse, perhaps suspending them and giving them more free time to fall back on a drinking vice isn’t the “moral and ethical” way to go.

Finally we have the “increase Friday classes” edict. And on this solution, there is a chance, chancellor, you may actually help the problem and not add to it. Participating in Thirsty Thursdays is high on the list of priorities for students of the Badger State. Forcing students to actually go to class the next morning might reduce the three-day weekend.

Of course, moving classes to Friday could just open up another day of few classes for students to party on. Replacing Thirsty Thursdays with Tipsy Tuesdays or Messed Up Mondays won’t help much. And there is always the chance that students will simply rebel and drink Thursday anyway, classes be damned. But at least this proposal isn’t a complete strikeout.

Now Chancellor Sorensen, you are probably wondering why such a serious issue was just treated with 800 words of sarcasm in a fake memo. It’s a fair question. After all, alcohol abuse is our state’s biggest problem next to MPS and Rep. Jeff Wood. The answer, unfortunately, is you set this tone early by denying students any chance for input on their campus.

“Some students get very angry,” Sorensen said to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but “I won’t take the criticism on this.”

Do those words sound like someone who is genuinely interested in helping campus, or someone who is desperately trying to deflect any blame for a drinking culture away from himself? Students, despite our plethora of dumb decisions, are still adults. And like any adult, we prefer to discuss rather than be ordered, and we want to contribute to the solution, rather than read condescending memos. The 1,505 members of the “Who Is the chancelor (sic) trying to kid? This is Stout!!!” Facebook group probably agree.

So send out version 2.0 of the drinking memo and ask students what they propose to do about the problem. The backlash will die down, and who knows, you might actually get some quality ideas from those you are trying to educate. We all make drunken mistakes, students understand. This memo was no different from the text to the ex everyone regrets the next morning.

Michael Bleach ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and history.